by Ann Cleeves
She felt she'd been trapped in this one room for days. If I was in London, she thought, I'd call someone.
We'd meet in a bar for a late lunch, a couple of glasses of wine. There'd be people around, noise, gossip. If I’d found a body there, I'd talk it out of my system. The image wouldn't sit in the back of my mind, contaminating every thought. It wouldn't float in front of my eyes when I was trying to draw.
She pulled on a pair of wellingtons and a coat and opened the door. The dog followed. An astonishing change in temperature had occurred outside overnight. It was as if Ravenswick had become a different place, softer, less hostile. The police were still on the road down by Hillhead, but there weren't so many of them on the hill now.
From this distance the men looked like children's stick drawings, like the drawing Cassie had made in the sand on the beach at the Haa.
She could see Euan's house too. His car still stood outside. She thought on impulse she should visit. If she was feeling stifled, how much more difficult must it be for him? She walked down the hill with the dog yap ping at her ankles. When she knocked at the door, Euan opened it immediately and glared out at her. She took a step back in surprise.
'I'm sorry' he said. 'I thought you were a reporter. The police stop them at the top of the bank, but one or two have got through. It's not the locals. The nationals must have got wind of the case now too!
'I wasn't sure if you'd want a visitor. I'm quite happy to go if you like. . !
'No. I should be looking through Catherine's things. The police have asked to see her video recorder. But I'm not sure I can face it yet. Let's have some tea, shall we?'
.
She left the dog in the garden and followed him.
When he took her into the space-age kitchen, she saw what an effort it was for him to hold it all together.
His hand shook as he held the kettle under the tap.
'I want to know about the other girl: he said, his back still towards her.
'What other girl?'
'Catriona Bruce. The other girl who lived here. The other girl who disappeared!
He turned and lifted two mugs from a shelf. 'At first it didn't matter who'd killed Catherine. Not really. It was being without her. Her absence. Very selfish, I'm sure, but that was all that mattered. Then you told me about the other girl and I realize it makes things different!
'How?'
'If Catherine's death is part of a pattern, it could have been avoided. You do see what I mean?'
Fran wasn't sure she understood at all, but she nodded slowly.
'So I have to know what happened to the girl eight years ago. It's a way of making sense of things. A way of understanding why Catherine died!
'Catriona's body was never found!
'I know that: The electric kettle had boiled but he ignored it. His tone was impatient and the anger had returned. 'Of course, I know that: He walked past Fran. 'Come here: he said. 'Come here! He seemed about to grab her arm, but stopped himself. He led her through into a small utility room, with a sink, washing machine and drier. It was a dark little room which had escaped the improvements in the rest of the house. It smelled damp. 'This must have been the old kitchen: he said. 'And this must have been the larder!
He opened a cupboard door. 'Look.' His voice had risen to a shrill squeal. 'Look.'
The inside of the larder door hadn't been painted for years. He pushed it wide open so she could see the marks in felt-tip pen drawn inside showing the height of the children who'd lived there. By each mark there was an initial and the date. He pointed to the lower mark. 'B: he said. 'That's for Brian, her younger brother. I asked the detective. He told me his name. This is Catriona.' The mark was pink. 'This is how tall she was a month before she died.'
'She was small for her age,' Fran was moved despite herself. Cassie would only be a couple of centimetres shorter.
Euan seemed to have forgotten that he'd offered her tea. He wandered back to the kitchen and sat on a stool with his head in his hands. She stood for a moment, helplessly, but realized there was nothing she could do for him. When she said she should go, he seemed not to notice.
Fran set off up the bank. She needed to walk away from the vision of the educated man crumbling in front of her, looking for an explanation in patterns and old pen marks on a wall, becoming obsessed with another child.
Was it guilt which drove him? The guilt of knowing he'd not been much of a father? The dog danced beside her then ran on. She came to an area of flat ground before the land started to rise steeply. Everything here was soggy, the ditches full of melted snow, the peat soaked and spongy. There was a pale sunshine which reflected from the standing water, the pools and puddles which had appeared overnight.
They ran together into one wide, shallow lake. She splashed through it, thinking, Cassie would love this.
I don't think I can handle this on my own, she thought. It wasn't just the big things, like Catherine and her father.
There was other stuff she'd have liked to discuss with friends. Men, for instance. She missed having a man in her life, would have liked to have admitted that, joking, weighing up the possibilities. Here, it was impossible to talk about it. People wouldn't understand.
She missed even the trivial conversations about clothes, diet, holidays, the stuff she'd despised when it was a part of her life. She'd always thought of herself as an independent woman. Strong. Now, for the first time since moving back to Shetland she longed for the company of her women friends.
Here, she'd always be an outsider. Always. Cassie might grow up with a Shetland accent, marry a local man, but people would never forget that her mother was English. It would have been different if Fran had stayed married to Duncan. There would have been acceptance of a kind then. Now she couldn't see how it would work out.
Of course there were other incomers, expat English. Hundreds of them, like Euan and her, trying to forge a life for themselves in the islands. Some of them tried so hard to be local that they made themselves ludicrous, with their spinning lessons, their music and attempts at dialect.
She saw them gathered in the cafes and restaurants in town, in their elaborate Fair Isle cardigans and handspun woollen sweaters. She met them at the film club and the book festival. Other incomers preferred to keep themselves apart. For them Shetland was a temporary exile and soon they'd return to civilization with tales of the cold and the isolation. Both groups mixed mostly with their own kind. She couldn't see herself fitting in with either of them. So, is this how it'll end? she thought. I'll become pathetic, lonely and middle-aged, living only through my art.
But already the exercise was lifting her mood. There was a childish pleasure in kicking out at the water as she walked through it. The last thought was self-mocking. And what was wrong, after all, with living through her art?
She began climbing the hill, following a drystone wall. She'd never been this far before. Usually on walks she had Cassie with her and the girl couldn't walk at this pace. She grizzled and whinged to return as soon as they were out of the house. Here, high on the moor, the effect of the rain and the melted snow was more dramatic. It ran in waterfalls down gullies in the rock and through the peat, picking up the soil and shale, scouring out a path down the hillside. It would take only one heavy rainstorm to cause more severe landslides.
She'd heard Alex Henry talk about it on the radio. Part of the problem was overgrazing, he'd said. There were just too many sheep, loosening the root structure of the grass, pulling away the fabric of the land. It was a good thing the system of subsidies would change and there'd no longer be a payment for every animal. She'd thought it had been a brave thing to say. It wouldn't make him friends among the farmers. He was a local and perhaps he was more isolated than she was. She'd heard the parents muttering about him in the school playground and wondered if he had any real friends at all.
The dog had run on, unaffected by the gradient. Now she stopped and was barking. Fran called to her, but she refused to return. Fran followe
d her across the hill, sliding occasionally where the ground was bare and muddy.
Maggie was at the top of a steep peat bank. The rain seemed to have loosened a pile of rocks and boulders exposing the black peat below. The dog was scrabbling into the debris. Fran called her again. She turned, but still she didn't move. The sun came out from behind thin cloud and shone more brightly than it had all day. It was low against the hill now and the light seemed unnatural, sulphurous. The dog and the boulders and the hillside seemed hard-edged, drawn by a heavy hand.
Breathing heavily, Fran reached the dog. She began swearing at her and told her she'd never wanted her in the first place. Then she stopped and caught hold of her collar and pulled her away. There was something under the pile of rock. A shoe. The leather was discoloured and the buckle was tarnished. It was a child's shoe. The dog was going crazy, barking and jumping, and Fran thought she would strangle herself. She was still trying to keep hold of the collar. There were a few tatters of clothing. Yellow cotton. And then the waxy outline of a small foot, pale against the black, fibrous peat.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Perez's mobile rang when he was on the landline to his mother. He'd just got in from talking to Alex Henry and decided he couldn't put it off any longer. He didn't know what he'd say to her, but she deserved a call. He poured himself a beer and dialled the number.
'Well?' she said, not asking first about the case, though she must surely know all about it, at least have heard about it on Radio Shetland. 'What about Skerry? Have you decided?' Her voice was calm. She wouldn't want to put him under pressure, but he could sense her excitement. More than anything she wanted him back at home. Perhaps she wanted that even more than grandchildren.
If she'd asked first about the case, if she'd realized how important his work was, not only to him but to the victims' families, he would have responded differently. But he felt a stab of resentment because her world was so restricted. Its limits were the edge of an island three miles long and two miles wide - the North Light and the South Light, Sheep Craig and Malcolm's Head. So when the mobile rang and he saw Fran Hunter's number come up on the display, he said, 'Look I'm sorry Mum, that call's urgent. Something to do with the Ross case. You can imagine what it's like here. Manic. I'll have to take it!
'Of course,' she said, contrite, because she could imagine it. 'I'm sorry. I know you've other things to think of!
'I'll ring you back. This evening if I can make it.' Already he regretted being so abrupt. 'We'll talk about it then!
'There's someone else interested,' she said quickly, fitting the words in, while his mobile played its ludicrous tune in the background. 'In Skerry. Willie's grandson. The one who went away to agricultural college. He wants to come home! Then she put down the phone. She took a starring role in the panto every Christmas. She knew how to do dramatic endings.
'Hello!'
Automatically he'd pressed the answer button and he could hear Fran Hunter, but his mind was elsewhere and it took a couple of seconds of her shouting Hello, hello, like a passenger on a train as it hits a tunnel, before he answered her.
'I've found the other girl,' she said, when she realized he could hear her. The words came singly. They dropped one by one into his ear, pebbles thrown from a cliff into water. I've / found / the / other / girl. By then he was sufficiently aware of how serious this must be, he could tell by the dull flat tone of her voice, so he didn't have to ask her what she meant.
Perez found her on the road outside her house, looking out for him. She'd shut the dog inside and she was jumping up at the window. It was almost dark. There was just a light grey strip above the horizon to the west.
‘I’ll take you up’ she said.’ It’ll take you ages to find it on your own’
He thought she looked like a child herself, huddled inside her jacket, the hood pulled right down over her forehead and zipped up over her chin, so all he could see were the eyes.
'I have to wait for a colleague! He'd left a message at the hotel for Roy Taylor. His phone had been engaged.
Perez knew his life wouldn't be worth living if he went on without the English detective. 'He'll not be long!
'Oh! She looked very pale.
'Shall we wait inside?' 'Are you OK?'
'What do you think? I've just found a body. The second in a week! He was surprised by the sharpness in her voice and wasn't sure what to say.
'I'm sorry,' she said. 'It just seems weird. I mean, why me? Again!
'Where's Cassie?' The coincidence of the first name struck him and he was astonished that he hadn't realized it before. Another girl whose name started with C.
'At a party. Otherwise she'd have been with me! She turned to him, to make him understand what a nightmare that would have been.
He wondered if he should say something, warn her never to let the girl out of her sight, but then Taylor turned up, driving the car so hard that they could hear it long before it came into view. Perez found himself disappointed by the arrival. He liked the inside of Fran's house. He wouldn't have minded waiting there with her, by the fire in the warm.
Taylor’s first concern when he jumped from the car was for Fran. He bounded towards her, very solicitous in an eager, clumsy way, which was patently sincere. He took one of her hands in two of his. 'How dreadful,' he said.
'What a terrible shock all over again! There was no trace of suspicion. Nothing to indicate he thought finding two bodies in less than a week was more than an unfortunate coincidence.
Perez realized that he was looking at his boss almost as a rival. Perez wanted Fran to like him best, to think him most considerate. Did Taylor have a partner? He had never mentioned a wife or a regular girlfriend. But perhaps there was someone. He had been talking on the phone for a long time while Perez was trying to get through to him.
Perez thought his own response to Fran must have seemed mean and uncaring in contrast and tried now to put that right.
'Mrs Hunter has offered to show us the place on the hill,' he said. 'I don't think that's necessary, do you? We'll pull in some other. men, cover the hill ourselves!
By now it was completely dark, but the sky had cleared and there was a moon. Taylor seemed to consider the matter very seriously. He turned to Fran. 'If you really don't mind,' he said. 'It would be a tremendous help!
Even in the dark, Perez could tell she was smiling. A child was lying dead on the hill and Roy Taylor could make her feel good about herself.
'Actually, I don't mind at all. It's much better than sitting on my own and waiting!
The expedition across the hill was an experience at once bizarre and strangely companionable. Later, he would remember it as a series of scenes. Fran led the way and the men followed one after the other. He was at the rear. At one point he looked up and saw that all three of them must be silhouetted against the moonlit sky. From the road they would look like characters from a children's cartoon. Something strange produced in Eastern Europe when he was a boy, he thought. Three eccentrics in search of hidden gold. Those films always had a quest at the heart of them.
The next moment to stick in Perez's memory was when Taylor stood in the Gillie Burn. He must have seen it, milky in the moonlight, but there was no way round. He wasn't wearing wellingtons and the cold water seeped almost immediately over the top of his boots, oozing through the thick woollen socks to the skin. He didn't swear, though of course he would have done if Fran hadn't been there. Perez took a delight in his discomfort, then thought that was childish. He was no better than the boys from Foula.
Then, just as they reached the landslip which had exposed the girl's body, the moon went behind a cloud, and the hill was suddenly dark. Perez shone his torch and that was how they first saw Catriona Bruce, caught in the torchlight. Very theatrical. The star, centre stage, lit by one spot. Her clothes were in tatters, but she was perfectly preserved. Perez thought of the fairy story Sleeping Beauty. That had ice and blood in it too. If I kiss her, he thought, she'll wake up. She'll turn into a pri
ncess.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Magnus Tait knew that they would come for him as soon as he saw the cars on the Lerwick road and the pinpricks of light moving over the hill. He wouldn't have known the police were there if he hadn't gone outside. He hadn't heard any unusual noise. He'd woken suddenly from one of his nightmares, panting and sweating, and had climbed out of bed because he couldn't bear the thought of going back to sleep and living the dream again.
Then he thought there would be nobody outside his door, not at two o'clock in the morning. He could see the time on his mother's clock. The journalists would be in their beds now, surely. It would be a chance to go outside.
He needed to remember what it looked like out there. He was going mad locked up in the house. It was making him upset and the nightmares were always worse when he was upset.
He went back to the bedroom and pulled on some clothes. Then he went out. He couldn't remember the last time he'd spent so long indoors. Even when he was ill with the sore throat and cough which came sometimes, he still liked to be in the open air. Then he thought it was probably the day after Catriona went missing. That was the last time. He'd been shut in all day then too. People had gathered outside the house and they'd all been angry, more angry than the folks there yesterday, because Catriona belonged, didn't she?
Kenneth was a Ravenswick man. His family had always been in the valley. It wasn't like Ross who'd only moved in six months before. That day they'd been crowded around the windows, banging on the panes, until his mother had gone out and shouted at them to leave him alone.
He's a good man.
That was what she'd said. She'd shouted it very loud and even cowering in the bedroom, he'd heard the words.